On Friday and through the weekend, the Akron Zoo along with 229 accredited members of the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, are coming together to mark the 10th anniversary of Endangered Species Day. They will ask visitors what it would be like if they no longer get to see or learn from animals.

To stage the possibility, zoo staff blocked off the large window in the endangered Sumatran tigers exhibit to show the ‘vanishing’ breed of tigers. They opened only a handful of holes through which guests were able to view the animals.

For over 1,000 Northeast Ohio School children and their 300 adult chaperones visited the zoo on Friday. The exhibit left little ones jostling and clamoring to claim the few spots from where they could see the magnificent beasts.

Some small children didn’t understand the concept of the display they unknowingly were examples of what it would be like in a world where people had to compete to garner a glimpse of an endangered Sumatran tiger.

Four-year-old Peyton Nairus of Parma Heights and Alana Turner, 3, of Brunswick stood looking through the holes and got mesmerized by watching the tiger roaming only an arm’s length away.

The girls visited the zoo along with their mothers, Tammi Nairus and Jennifer Turner, who came with a group from Brunswick’s Applewood Elementary School.

David Barnhardt, director of marketing and guest services, said the zoo has used the event to launch SAFE (Saving Animals From Extinction), an AZA program for raising awareness of the efforts to save animals.

Barnhardt added, “Through SAFE we will pull all of these resources we have available to us and develop action plans, raise awareness and engage the public to help these endangered species”.

AZA zoos and aquariums have 750,000 animals that represent more than 6,000 species out of which almost one thousand are endangered. As a group they invest more than $160 million every year toward field conservation to help save animals in the wild.